Saves on leasing fees for ISP's equipment. Relatively easy to set up. No noticeable difference in browsing experience over using ISP's modem. Works with most major cable Internet service. IPv6 supported. DOCSIS 3 compliant.

Cons

May require you to set up your wireless router again. Slightly reduced download speeds. Only one year warranty.

Bottom Line

If you don't mind putting in a minimal amount of networking elbow grease in exchange for paying your Internet provider less money every month, check out Netgear's High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31T).

With Internet broadband service, an ISP provides customers with the cable or DSL modem they need for Internet access. Customers are typically charged a monthly fee to lease this equipment. Did you know that with most broadband service, you have the option to purchase your own cable or DSL modem and save yourself that added cost? Netgear's High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31T) is a great choice for those who want to make the plunge.

If you pay a monthly fee to lease a cable modem, buying a modem will eventually pay for itself. The average price at least for my ISP is just about $3.00 per month to lease a cable modem. Since Netgear's cable modem supports all the major cable service providers, this means that even if you swap providers, the unit should pay for itself in a couple of years.

I recently tested Netgear's High Speed Cable Modem, swapping it for the Ubee cable modem I lease from my provider. For those of you who don't mind doing a little configuring and troubleshooting of your Internet connection, buying the CMD31T is a good way to (eventually) offset cable costs.

Of course, the downside of owning your own cable modem is that Netgear gives you a one-year warranty in case something goes wrong with the device. If your ISP's cable modem goes, they will just replace it. If the Netgear cable modem breaks and the warranty is up, you have to either lease one from your provider or buy your own again.

Specs and DesignThe CMD31T is a slim, white, rectangular device that looks a lot like a small router. The modem ships with a stand so it can operate horizontally or vertically. Also included in the package are an Ethernet cable, power adapter, and instruction guide. It's also rather small and light measuring 6.9 by 4.5 by 1.2 inches (HWD), and weighs 0.68 of a pound.

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The stand is actually comprised of two plastic feet that sit in the airflow vents on the housing. Surprisingly, the little feet took some time to get in place.

The modem only has one Gigabit Ethernet LAN port. You can use this port to connect to a wireless router. There's also a female "Y" connector—the coaxial connector for the Internet cable service.

The front panel has several LEDs which indicate the status of Ethernet as well as downstream and upstream traffic. The LEDs change color according to activity. For example, the Ethernet LED has a 1Gbps connection when it's solid green, 100Mbps when it glows amber, and turns red if connected to a device that only supports 10Mbps (pretty rare, nowadays).

The upstream/downstream traffic LEDs change color based on which channel the upstream or downstream traffic uses. If the "US1/2" LED is lit solid amber, that means the upstream link is using channel 1. There are a lot of different color possibilities to interpret but Netgear provides a chart so you can tell what's happening with your traffic. Suffice to say, you know everything is in working order when all the LEDs are green, at least with most cable broadband connections.

The CMD31T is DOCSIS 3-compliant. DOCSIS is a standard for transferring high-speed data over coaxial cable. Most ISPs providing cable Internet should be using DOCSIS 3. It's important to find out for sure and make sure you buy the right cable modem.

Fortunately, a DOCSIS 3 cable modem such as the CMD31T is backwards-compatible with older DOCSIS technology.

Another great feature of the CMD31T is that it supports IPv6, so it's ready as an ISP and the Internet as a whole transition to IPv6.

SetupI disconnected my old cable modem and swapped in the Netgear modem. The instruction guide gives newbies an illustration on how the cable modem should connect. The device took about 15 minutes to fully boot and then a bit longer as I waited for the power and online LEDs to turn solid green (something you want to see on the modem before moving forward with the setup.)

The modem's directions then instruct customers call their ISP once the power and online LEDs are green because the ISP has to activate the new modem.

Before I even contacted my provider, my wireless router, which I had already connected to the Netgear modem, detected an active Internet (WAN) connection—which is good. However, when trying to Internet browse, I was stopped by a walled garden page from my provider instructing me to call them to give them the MAC address of my new cable modem.

So, when you swap out your cable modem, your ISP will likely be able to detect you did, and you will have to call them so they can allow the new device access to their service. Such tight control is actually necessary so the ISP's network isn't compromised.

Once I contacted my ISP, I waited about half an hour (although activation can often take up to an hour). I still however, could not browse the Internet when connected wirelessly to my router. I knew that the Netgear cable modem was activated because if I connected my computer directly to the LAN port of the CMD31T, I was able to get on the Internet.

I ran through the Internet connection setup wizard on my wireless router. This re-synced the router with my Internet connection, and I was back up and running.

Netgear CMD31T InterfaceI accessed the CMD31T's web GUI by simply pointing a browser to the default IP address of the device (192.168.100.1) and using the default credentials: admin, and "password" for login username and password.

The interface is locked in pretty tightly with my ISP's service. All I could see was some information about the connection such as the connectivity state, downstream channel frequency and other information most users will care nothing about. The only administrative tasks you can really do with the cable modem are change the password and view an event log—handy, for troubleshooting Internet connection problems or keeping track of Internet downtime.

The fact that you can't really manage the cable modem is fine. All of your network administration such as setting up Wi-Fi, port forwarding, content filtering, parental controls, and so on, should be performed on your wireless router, not the cable modem.

PerformanceI was curious to find out if there was any performance difference between using my provider's leased cable modem and the Netgear modem. I measured my internet bandwidth using speedtest.net first with the provider's Ubee modem and then with the Netgear cable modem.

With the Ubee modem, speedtest.net measured download speed at 19.25Mbps and upload at 0.98Mbps.

With the Netgear CMD31T, download was a bit slower at 14.39Mbps and upload was 0.99Mbps.

While my download speed registered slightly slower with the Netgear modem in place, the difference is not significant enough to impact my web browsing. In fact, it's impossible to say if the Netgear modem caused the slightly slower download bandwidth because I tested later on in the day when the service in my area could have had more users accessing it. It's hard to pinpoint the exact cause of the slower download number, but I did not notice any slower browsing experience or doing tasks like gaming or Skype-ing.

Good Alternative to LeasingNetgear's High Speed Cable Modem is a good alternative for anyone looking to avoid paying leased equipment fees to their ISP. This modem is relatively easy to setup and works with the major ISPs including Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox, and others.

If you are not thrilled about the idea of doing a little work to get your own cable modem set up and prefer to just leave alone the equipment the ISP's technician set up when you first got your service, then you may not want to go with a device like the CMD31T. If you don't mind putting in a minimal amount of networking elbow grease and are delighted with paying your provider that many fewer dollars a month, check out the CMD31T. It's a four-star Editor' Choice for networking hardware.

Netgear High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31T)

Bottom Line: If you don't mind putting in a minimal amount of networking elbow grease in exchange for paying your Internet provider less money every month, check out Netgear's High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31T).

About the Author

Samara Lynn has nearly twenty years experience in Information Technology; most recently as IT Director at a major New York City healthcare facility. She has a Bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, several technology certifications, and she was a tech editor for the CRN Test Center.
With an extensive, hands-on background in deploying and manag... See Full Bio

Netgear High Speed Cable Modem ...

Netgear High Speed Cable Modem (CMD31T)

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